Thursday, 14 May 2015

This phrase, “taking time off” is interesting because time is never off.
Like it says in the old ad for Timex, it just keeps on ticking and one day, we
will run out of time, or walk out, or lie down and check out. Think of
some amusing ways people speak about time. “I didn’t have time to do
it.” What they mean is they did not choose to take the time to do it,
whatever “it” was, but who is going to say that they chose something
else? How about this? “It’s time to eat.” That was
mother calling from the kitchen. Whether you were actually hungry or not
didn’t matter. It was “time” for breakfast, lunch or dinner. One
family I knew quite well, not my own, sat down precisely at 5:30 PM every
evening for dinner and everyone was expected to be there and be on time.
Being “on time” is highly important to many people but different cultures
regard that behavior with more or less value.

Personal priorities about being “on time” may vary.We are often like Pavlov’s dog. The bell
rings and we respond whether by changing activities, answering a call, looking
at a text or checking something in the oven. We are conditioned and
regulated by time. It’s “time” to go to bed. It’s “time” to get
up. It’s “time” to go to work. It’s “time out” and “time” to start
again. It’s “time” for the meeting. It’s “time” to leave in order
to get there in a reasonable amount of time. It’s all about time and yet
time is an invention, a construct for our convenience and we are bound by
it. How we measure time and how we use it reveals an enormous amount
about who we are as individuals and who we are as a culture.

Here’s a phrase that amuses me because of the double entendre. “It’s
about time” we say, meaning in one way that we have waited for some time for
something or other to happen and finally, it has taken place. Whether that
expresses gratitude, relief or annoyance depends upon the context. A
long-awaited package arrives at the door and we say, “It’s about
time!” And really, it is simply that it has taken longer than was
expected or desired for the delivery to be accomplished. Big deal!
Get over it! At least we got the package.

In order to get
more done in the same amount of time the phenomenon of multi-tasking has
appeared and it seems to have arrived in conjunction with computers that are
able to perform several functions at the same time. Recent research
at Stanford on multi-tasking shows that people
who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do
not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as
well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time.

High-tech jugglers are everywhere – keeping up several
e-mail and instant message conversations at once, text messaging while watching
television or even driving a car, and jumping from one website to another while
plowing through homework assignments. But after putting about 100
students through a series of three tests, the researchers realized those heavy
media multi-taskers are paying a big mental price.

When it comes to our brain’s ability to pay attention,
the brain focuses on concepts sequentially and not on two things at once. In
fact, the brain must disengage from one activity in order to engage in another.
And it takes several tenths of a second for the brain to make this switch. As
John Medina, author of “Brain Rules” says: “To put it bluntly, research shows
that we can’t multitask. We are biologically incapable of processing
attention-rich inputs simultaneously.” ( http://brainrules.blogspot.com/2008/03/brain-cannot-multitask_16.html)

When we are in situations where there are multiple
sources of information coming from the external world or emerging out of
memory, we are apparently not able to filter out what's not relevant to our
current goal. That failure to filter means we are slowed down by that
irrelevant information."

However, that said, there may be some exceptions and
here is one illustration. The song, “The Time of My Life” was the
music and lyrics used in the final scene of the movie Dirty Dancing with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, and was
written by Frankie Previte. Previte said: "I received a call
from Jimmy Ienner who asked me to write a song for this little movie. I
told him I didn't have the time and he said, 'Make time. This could change your
life.'" Frankie's former bandmate John DeNicola and his friend Don
Marowitz came up with the music for the song. Says Previte, "I received a
track from John and Donny and I wrote the lyric and melody for the chorus in
the car while I was driving along the Garden State Parkway, going to a studio
session for another song."

Here’s the message: Making or taking time to do
what is really important can change your life. The question is, what is really
important? And if you’re driving, be careful!

Saturday, 9 May 2015

Andrew approached me with his paper in hand, presented it to
me and said, “Here, is this what you want?”I was teaching an elective in "creative writing" for
juniors and seniors in high school and Andrew was one of those edgy students
who often seemed unhappy with an assignment but worked hard to fulfill it.

I said to Andrew, “Is this what you want to give me?”And he replied, “You made the
assignment.”I said that I did but
that this was his work and I wondered if he was satisfied that this was his
best work or that if I gave him another 24 hours to revise it and make it
better, would he like to do that?

Andrew looked at me with a suspicious kind of smirk,
probably wondering if I was trying to trick him somehow, and he said, “Are you
serious?”I said yes, that I was
serious because this was serious work and what I wanted was the best he had to
offer and if another revision could make it better, then I would be glad to
give him a little more time to make it among his best work.

I held out the paper and said, “Andrew, your writing is
important and you’re getting better each week so if you want to polish this
further, have a go at it.”He took the paper, smiled, turned and walked away.His revised draft was significantly
improved.

As I have related this story to hundreds of teachers, I
asked them the question if that’s what they want from their students, their
best work, regardless of the grade level or subject they teach?They usually nod their heads in
agreement or say yes although “best work” may mean something slightly different
to different people.

I then said to the teachers, that is exactly what we want
from you, your best work, and if it takes a little more time, that’s all
right.If you need more time to
make it better, then it’s up to all of us to find that time, carve it out of an
already busy schedule, and have the opportunity to make your work as a teacher
the best that it can be. Dedicated, talented teachers are not satisfied with
anything less than their best.

Tuesday, 5 May 2015

When we were starting a new school, in 1994, one of my first
tasks was to hire the teachers who would join us in this adventure of a
lifetime.We projected how many
students we would have, the subject areas we would focus on and then worried
later about where it would be.I
put out the word that I was looking for creative, innovative, bright, spirited
teachers, and the kind who would relish spending their days with 6th
and 7th graders.We were very big on creativity and innovation 21 years ago.

We advertised widely, described the vision for our school, a
place that was ready “to prepare young men and women to become lifelong
learners with the highest character values and academic goals in a natural New
Mexico setting with strong family and community involvement.”We wanted our teachers to be role
models and we wanted a curriculum that was comprehensive, integrated,
developmentally appropriate and performance-based.

The applications started coming in and I began interviewing
people whom I believed had the potential to join this team of pioneers working
collaboratively to provide an exceptional educational experience.I talked with almost 100 of these
people and ended up hiring 8 talented and dedicated teachers – one each for
Language Arts, Social Studies, Math, Science, Spanish, Art, Music and Physical
Education.Each one of these
people made distinguished contributions to our early growth and success with
precious few resources and a makeshift environment for those first 60 students.

All of those teachers had a can-do attitude, were confident
and courageous in their use of original sources with few textbooks and hardly
any technology in those early days.The story of the school is interesting in itself and today it is a
thriving community of some 550 students, grades 6-12, where the graduates
continue to make their contributions to the world at large.(www.bosqueschool.org)

One teacher in particular, the science teacher who is still there after 20 years and going strong, used the
local outdoor surroundings as his primary classroom, teaching the students how
to conduct field studies in a thoughtful, systematic and meaningful way.One parent, coming into the school
where students were organizing and interpreting their findings asked this
teacher what text he was using and his response was: “Mrs. X, we are writing
the books that other students will read to learn about science.”As a university professor she was both
amazed and favorably impressed.

This teacher’s work, and that of his students, fed data into
several local, state and federal agencies making multimillion dollar decisions
about how to allocate their resources.Students had the opportunity to not only learn but also to experience
first-hand how their work made significant contributions to the community where
they lived and beyond.That
program expanded into the Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program (BEMP) that now involves over 5,500 students up
and down 300 miles of the Rio Grande, far exceeding the water that flows in the
river.

The point of this story is that there are few limits to what
you can do if you have the right people in the right seats on the bus, a la Jim
Collins.It’s also
important that the bus has a capable, competent driver who knows where he or
she is going and what it will take to get there.Equally important is that the bus is in good operating
condition and adequately fueled for the journey.

The impact of one teacher influences his or her students to
consider how they want to contribute to the world to make it better.The power of that teacher extends far
beyond the classroom and laboratory to the farthest reaches of the globe.My response is enormous gratitude for
the talents, skills and commitments of these kinds of teachers, doing what they
do every day, year after year.

Monday, 4 May 2015

These elements we accept without thinking, without a deep
sense of appreciation and yet they sustain life as we know it.

Fire - It keeps
us warm and we can’t live without it whether body temperature or the proverbial
fire in the belly; the furnace that both digests what we consume and drives us
to do what we do.When you are “on
fire” with a project, there is no holding back.Fire can cook and it can destroy.We depend on the sun and ever more so with solar power as a
renewable energy source.“A day
without sunshine, is you know, night.”Steve Martin

Earth - Live
close to the land, listen to its heartbeat, commune with nature and you will
never be lost.The earth, as
fragile and precious as it is, constantly renews itself, and it is our home in
space and time.We must work in
concert with the forces of nature rather than trying to harness and control
them.We have taken so much from
the earth and it might behoove us to see what we can give back.“Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that
knows poems.”Rainer Maria Rilke

Air - We cannot
see the wind, we do not know from whence it comes nor where it goes but we can
see the effects, in trees, flags, smoke and even on top of the water.We need air to breathe, cleaner air,
pure and crystal clear, unpolluted whenever possible.A clean air act won’t do anything by itself.Clean air needs living, breathing
people to insure the future“Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are,
in fact, plans to protect mankind.”Stuart Udall

Water - The universal
solvent, covering two-thirds of the earth’s surface, water comes in many forms
whether in the oceans, or treated and potable water from wells and
aquifers.Rain, rivers, lakes and
streams, water is all around us. Floods and tides can destroy and when there is
not enough water there is drought.Too much or not enough, either can be disastrous and the right amount is
a blessing for people, plants and animals and the earth itself.“Water is the driving force of all
nature.”Leonardo da Vinci

Spirit - In almost all world languages and cultures there is a word for
spirit.The meaning from the Greek
psyche, is “spirit” that gives life
to all animate beings.Sometimes
translated “soul” it can be understood as a force that mediates between mind
and body, between the physical world and that which cannot be seen.Spirit transcends worldly matter and
some world religions assign a deity as the creative force that brings into
being that which is not.In Latin creatio ex nihilio, creating from
nothing to bring into being that which is.

“Changing is not just changing
the things outside of us…we need the right view…of being and non-being, creator
and creature, mind and spirit.... crucial for transformation and healing.”Thich Nhat Hanh

About Me

Writer, traveler, hiker, fisherman, enjoying these later years, migrate south in winter along with birds and butterflies to Mexico, looking ahead to the next adventure, project and sending good wishes to friends, family and colleagues.